


Die Traumdeutung

by yourcrookedheart



Series: Fanfiction Tropes [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 21:58:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: Will dreams. Hannibal analyzes. Psychoanalysis is (ab)used.





	Die Traumdeutung

**Author's Note:**

> Things that were inevitable: me writing Hannibal fic. There will probably be more at some point. Set somewhere during s2 - an exercise in trying to get the character voices right. Let me know if I succeeded. 
> 
> This story is a part of a series of prompts I wrote, centered around fanfic tropes. The trope this was written for is ‘Sleeplessness/Insomnia’.

Will Graham’s dreams are populated with wraiths. They curl around the edges of his consciousness, cling to his awakening mind to intrude upon the daylight. When he awakens it’s the jolting type, the only way of rousing he knows these days. It’s no wonder he rarely sleeps.

As he’d lain recovering in the hospital, the doctors had told him that once the encephalitis had been treated his sleep should stabilize again. Return to normal, whatever that might’ve meant when he was about to be shipped off to a mental asylum. It hasn’t. The disease has been treated, but its symptoms remain, like a conditioned response. Show him a body and the flashes will come, rapid-fire like gunshots. Show him a body, and Pavlov will appear to examine the reaction.

Worse than the insomnia, he can no longer differentiate between dreams and wakefulness, nightmare and reality. Abigail’s delicate neck beneath his palm. Abigail’s blood coating his hands, his shirt, his vision. Abigail’s screams, the tang of her blood. Hobbs falling, time and time again, his body a colander and Will’s empty gun a dead weight. Alana, solid and shattered, in his arms and beyond his reach.

And always, through it all like a constant shade, Hannibal Lecter.

*

After everything Will ends up in Hannibal’s office again, back where he started. It’d be a full circle if he thought the story was over, but it isn’t, not as long as Hannibal lives. The office remains overpowering as ever, dim despite the high-ceilinged windows, air of gravitas draped over every foreign science volume and every lavish artwork. In here, the surroundings never fade into the background but remain ever-present, not unlike the room’s proprietor.

Hannibal sits across from him, measuring Will’s silence. This week’s case has been particularly draining, Jack’s worry permanently etched on his face, and at the end of it is Hannibal, waiting for Will to bare his soul. Pavlov, waiting for the drop of saliva that will prove his thesis. Sometime during their sessions last year their chairs had moved closer together. Or rather, Hannibal had moved them and Will had noticed, lain awake trying to decipher the meaning of a couple of inches. He was meant to notice, Will realizes now. One more riddle, one more game to keep him from his sleep.

The chairs are back to their usual distance now, aligned with the carpet. They must be feigning professionalism again.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Hannibal says.

“My dreams aren’t the most pleasant place to be.” Will doesn’t mean to sound accusatory, but the reply comes out that way anyway. Most of his replies do, ever since they’ve resumed their sessions. They ignore that, just as they appear to ignore the fact that Will is not the only one in the room who has committed a murder.

Hannibal shifts, resting his forearms on his knees. Every bit the attentive, curious doctor. “Yet your profession requires you to confront the worst of humanity. How is this different from your nightmares?”

“My _profession_ requires me to confront the worst in others. My dreams are a result of my own mind.” Will leans back in his chair, the negative image of Hannibal’s pose. “I prefer the horror of reality.”

“You fear your own imagination. What is it about your dreams that frightens you so?”

“I don’t know. How do you sleep, Dr. Lecter?”

This is what they do now. This strange distortion of therapist-and-patient conversations, where every question asked is turned around. It should feel like walking in circles, but it doesn’t, not with Hannibal Lecter as a partner.

Will’s own question is ignored. “There is often more truth in dreams,” Hannibal says. Vague, general. Alluding to some unknown insight into Will’s mind.

“I think psychoanalysis is starting to wear me out.”

Hannibal smiles as if by evading his questions Will has answered them anyway. Perhaps he has.

*

The truth in Will’s dreams is one he’d rather not linger on. Abigail’s blackening throat as her blood runs down his knife. Hobbs’ blind white eyes that see everything, whispering things only Will can hear. Alana, always walking away. And Hannibal, smile dancing around his lips as Will’s hands encircle his throat; the intimacy of feeling his pulse stumble and fade beneath his thumb.

There are other dreams as well. Alana and Hannibal, tangled together, Alana’s hair a dark pool among white sheets. Her face is, as ever, turned from Will, but Hannibal’s isn’t. His cool eyes assess, as carefully as during their daytime sessions. Alana rests between them like a divider, like an objective, like a woman they both desire. The image is wrong. The scene rearranges itself in Will’s mind. Alana’s warm breath on the nape of his neck, face still hidden even as her lips press burns into his skin. Hannibal’s pale eyes, his fingers playing Bach’s _Aria Da Capo_ down Will’s bare sternum. _There is often more truth in dreams_. Hannibal’s lips shape the words without producing sound, and black water crawls up Will’s chest, fills his eyes, his ears, his lungs. He gasps for air.

Reality intrudes in a flash as he blinks in his darkened bedroom, Winston nudging at his hand. He’s sweating, and hard, and the dream remains behind his eyelids refusing to be banished to the realm of sleep.

*

In the corner of Will’s vision, out the window just beyond the porch, a shadow-stag rears its head, its breath turning to fog in the cold night air. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://queennsansa.tumblr.com/).


End file.
